Raspberry-Blueberry Mousse Cream Cake (Niilo's birthday cake)

Prepare springform cake pan

5 Eggs, Sugar, Potato starch-flour-baking powder
mix all in equal portions.

Pour Sugar into Eggs and Whisk well

See the volume and the color of the whisked eggs and sugar?

Flour mix and a sieve

Sieve flour-starch-baking powder mixture and fold.

Pour batter into the prepared baking pan/tin.

Bake in the oven for about 40 -50 mins (check instructions)

Sponge Base 


Ingredients:

1 Glass of Egg (5 eggs)
1 Glass of Sugar
1/3 Glass of Potato starch }
2/3 Glass of Flour             } sieve together
1 tsp of Baking Powder     }

Method:

• Preheat the oven for 180°C (360 °F)
• Prepare a 9 inch/24 cm springform pan (butter and breadcrumbs or butter and flour) 
• Whip eggs and sugar until fluffy (very light yellow almost double in volume)
• Sieve in the flour into the egg batter and fold in until well mixed.
• Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for about 40-50 mins depending on oven type (if fan assisted reduce temperature by about 5°C or about 30 °F)

Frozen berries waiting to be melted with sugar

Blended berries placed back into heat to dissolve gelatin.

Cooled (lukewarm) berries mixture folded into whipped cream.

Raspberry-Blueberry Mousse


Ingredients:


1 1/2 dl frozen Raspberries
1 dl frozen blueberries (I used wild blueberries/ bilberries)
1 1/2 sheet of gelatin (if using Dr. Oetker brand then two sheets since they are shorter for some reason)
3 tablespoon of sugar
3 dl of whipping cream
1 tsp if vanilla sugar

Method:

• Soak the gelatin sheets in cold water.
• Heat the berries with sugar until melted but not boiling.
• In a large mug (use the ones that were provided by the stick blender you've purchased) blend the berries but not too much.
• Put berries back to stove to medium.
• Place the soften gelatin sheets until dissolves into the berry mix.
• Leave the berry-gelatin mix aside to cool.

• In a large bowl place whipping cream and vanilla sugar.
• Whip the cream until peak
• Fold in the berry-gelatin mixture until it's evenly mixed
• Place the mixture in the fridge until cake is cool enough to be put together.

Slap on half the portion of berry-mousse
onto the milk moisten sponge base

Top up with another layer of sponge base
(don't forget to moisten with milk) and then add the
remaining berry mousse on to the base before topping it off with
the final layer of sponge.

I used a large tip basketweave to spread the
cream on to the cake.

Notice how messy it looks now? Don't worry...

This is the finished result. And it's not quite done yet.

I wanted to make a cartoony sky and grass look
with a road to split the two sides.
Hence I used a spoon to make the shape in the middle
to split the colors.

Now you get an idea what it looks like once the colored cream
is spread.

I placed the fondant road on top of the cake.

Added the car to check what it looks like later =D.

The finished product.

To Decorate the cake

500 ml of milk         }

1 tsp of vanilla sugar} mix together

550 ml of Whipping cream

Assorted food coloring (Wilton food coloring was used in this picture)

2 tsp of vanilla sugar

2-3 Tbs of Sugar

Notes: You only moisten the cake once you've put it in place not before transferring. The reason is that if you were to moisten it before transferring the cake, it will be too soft and there is a greater risk for you to break the sponge cake.

The Gingerbread cookies/ Piparkakku Taikina (also vegan friendly)

Ingredients
1 3/4 dl syrup
2 dl sugar
1 dl water 
200 grams of butter or margarine (vegetable based)
2.5 Tbsp - 3 Tbsp of ála Meira Gingerbread spice mix
2 tsp of baking soda  }Mix into flour to be sieved 
1 L of flour                } 


Method:


Heat the syrup, sugar and spice until sugar has dissolve and the spices start to smell your kitchen (I love this bit). Remove the syrup mixture away from heat and put in the butter to melt into the syrup mix and stir well. Pour this mixture into a mixing bowl. Add the water and mix well. Sieve the flour and baking soda mixture into the syrup to make a cookie dough. You can beat with hand but I use an electric mixer. Put the dough in a cling film and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or overnight. Once the dough is ready, split the amount you want to prepare and cut out shapes with your cookie cutter. Bake in the oven for 6-8 mins depending how thin you want your cookies at 180 -200 °C (I make them so thin that it's hard to lift them to the baking tray after cutting out the shapes because I just love the crunchie cookies)

Gingerbread cookies
Piparkakku

Ainekset
1 3/4 dl siirappia
2 dl sokeri
1 dl vettä
200 gram voi tai Keiju (tumma sininen, se pitäis olla vegaani)
2.5 rkl - 3 rkl á la Meira piparkakkumauste
2 tl ruokasooda
1 L vehnäjauho


Valmistus:


Kuumenna siirappi, sokeri ja mauste, kunnes sokeri on hajottaa. Poista siirappi seos pois liedelltä ja laita voita tai margariini sulautuvat siirappi sekoitetaan ja sekoita hyvin. Kaada seos kulhoon. Lisää vesi ja sekoita hyvin. Siivilöi jauhot ja leivinjauhe seos siirappi sekoita kunnes ainekset muuttu taikinan. Voit vatkaa käsi voimalla, mutta käytän sähkövatkain. Laita taikina kelmulla ja kylmässä vähintään 3 tuntia tai yön yli. Kun taikina on valmis, jaettu määrä haluat valmistaa ja leikata kuvioita suosikki pipari muoti. Paista uunissa 6-8 min, riippuen kuinka ohut haluat  180 -200 ° C noin 6 - 8 minutti.


Spice mix if you don't have á la meira brand spice mix:


1.5 tbs cinammon powder
1.5 tbs of ginger powder
1.5 tbs of clove powder
1-2 tsp of bitter orange powder (depends how orangey you like, becareful too much could make it bitter)

Note: You can make more and keep if you plan to make a bigger batch of cookies! =)

Mausteseos jos sinulla ei ole à la Meira merkki Piparkakkumauste:
1,5 rkl kaneli jauhe1,5 rkl inkivääriä jauhe1,5 rkl neilikka jauhe1-2 tl pomeranssi jauhe (riippuu kuinka 'appelsiinimainen' haluat, ole varovainen liikaa voisi olla kitkerä)
Huomautus: Voit tehdä enemmän ja säily, jos aiot tehdä suuremman erän taikina! =)

The Gingerbread experiment - what's cooking this Xmas?

A short story on my journey to find the best gingerbread recipe. I've looked high and low in the internet and also at some point gave in to getting the store bought frozen dough (yuck!). I have also tried the ones that had eggs and to my big disappointment the texture of the cookie was not what I expected. Let's put it this way. The ones that contain egg's texture got worse each passing day.

I've also looked high and low in stores for the best ready spice mixture for the gingerbread cookies. I've found that the Á la Meira ones are better than the Santa Maria. The reason being that I do like my gingerbread cookies to have a hint of citrus (this being the bitter orange or in Finnish pomeranssi).

Blue Bag - Santa Maria Gingerbread spice
and
Yellow-green Bag- á la meira Gingerbread spice

If you cannot find this in your local store (wherever you are) I've measured a good recipe spice mix to get close to the á la meira spice as possible.

I've done an experiment to put 1/5 parts of Santa Maria Gingerbread mix and 4/5 parts of the Á la Meira Gingerbread mix and the cookies are still splendid.

The difference between the two spices are:

Santa Maria:-
Ginger
Cinnamon,
Clove
Cardamom

Á la Meira:-
Ginger
Cinnamon
Clove
Bitter Orange

I don't mind having cardamom in my cookies but too much is too much. I'm not making pulla! I'll create the Gingerbread cookie recipe is both English and Finnish, since this is a more Finnish traditional recipe ;-).